HUMANS - a project about the human condition
It all started with thoughts about Africa. The picture of Africa is in the perception of most moving between the two extremes of Safaris, white beaches and colorful dancers and the pictures of war, poverty and misery. During the last years of working in different countries in Africa another picture took over and shaped a life between those extremes, a life that can be considered as “normal”.
In 2009 we started a little experiment in Rwanda. We asked different people the same three questions. “What makes you happy?”, “Where would you like to wake up tomorrow morning?” and “What would you like to happen at the end of the day?”, and we edited three short films out of this. We hoped that asking these general questions – which you could ask people all over the world – would help to bring attention to the similarities in our wishes, hopes and dreams rather than focusing on the exotic or miserable conditions which normally so fast leaves us behind with the impression of a lost continent. So in short, with this project we wanted to show more of the universal side of human life.
Now, in 2011, we want to take it a huge step further with our project called “Humans”. Behind the simple title you will find the concept of ‘One Question’ developed into a new direction. From June 2011 we will travel from Capetown to Cairo, with local transport and while on this journey we will be interviewing and talking to a lot of different people. We will this time do longer interviews with people, and with this we hope to be able to give a deeper understanding or impression of the lifes people live: their dreams, their personal goals, what influences them and what makes them proud – and shape their answers into short portrait-films about each person.
During the journey of half a year, you could follow the project here through short films of the people we interview, watch the portraits, get impressions from the countries through our blog and read, listen and see what people will tell and show us.
But the project doesn’t stop with this journey. Through the universal concept which the project HUMANS is build upon, we hope to get more and more people to give answers to the questions we have been asking, not only in Africa but in all over the world. We hope this could create little bit of a deeper understanding for different cultures, livelihoods and dreams. Not told by any “experts” but by ordinary people who share their thoughts through the framework of this project. In the spirit of this, we will at some point open the project for the puplic to upload their videos with their answers to the questions.
If you are interested in more information, want to take part in HUMANS, write about HUMANS or have other media inquiries, please mail us at:humans@simonsticker.com
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